VON HINDENBURG FOILED.
Meanwhile, what was happening at Warsaw? The coming of the enemy was heralded by airships and aeroplanes, which hovered over the city, dropping bombs on the railway stations, and showers of leaflets urging the Poles to take sides with the Germans. The city was full of spies, and many of the Jew inhabitants were friendly to the enemy. Spies were shot and hanged daily. The coming of the aircraft created a panic, but the terror soon passed away. Then Uhlans appeared eight miles from the centre of the city, and numbers of well-to-do residents fled into Russia. Despite these "excursions and alarms," most of the people in Warsaw went about their business or pleasure quite unmoved.
On Friday, the 16th, the fight for Warsaw began. Von Hindenburg himself directed the operations of the five army corps which were to make the grand assault. On Sunday, the 18th, the Germans were on the edge of the city, and the shells from their field howitzers were bursting in the suburbs. The windows of Warsaw shook with the roar of guns, and at night the western sky was bright with the flashes of artillery and the flames of burning homesteads. Fierce warfare was raging only a few miles away, but the citizens seemed as gay and light-hearted as ever. They thronged the pavements, the cafés, and the cinema shows in the old accustomed way, and save for the cannonading, the streams of wounded, the occasional appearance of a Taube, and the soldiers in the streets, there was nothing to indicate that a desperate battle was being fought five miles away.
Outside the forts to the west of the Vistula the Grand Duke had dug lines of trenches; but when the fight began they were but thinly held. It is said that there was a period of seven hours during which the Germans might have entered the city unopposed. Along one of the main roads leading directly to Warsaw there were no Russians capable of holding back the enemy for a single hour. For some unknown reason the Germans failed to take advantage of this gap in the line of defence.
Just at the critical moment reinforcements arrived, and the people poured into the streets to welcome them. The first corps to reach the city consisted of Siberians, who were so eager to meet the enemy that they leaped down from the cars and formed up without a moment's delay. In a very brief time they were swinging over the Vistula bridge, through the main street, and on their way to the trenches. These men had been brought by rail from Moscow. The people cheered them to the echo, flung flowers amongst them, and pressed cigarettes and other gifts on them.
German Infantry moving across the Plain towards Warsaw. Photo, The Sphere.
The big stubborn Siberians bore the brunt of the German attack, and made a most determined defence. They were assisted by their old enemies and present friends, the Japanese. Several batteries of heavy guns, served by Japanese gunners who had travelled from the Far East by the Siberian railway, now came into action. Nevertheless, the situation was still full of peril.
More reinforcements followed, and soon the Russians were so strongly entrenched as to defy all von Hindenburg's efforts. Many of the newcomers had marched from Galicia amidst terrible weather along the right bank of the Vistula, over roads deep in mud or flooded by swollen streams. We do not know exactly the strength of the relieving army, but a Russian writer tells us that in one day "four columns, each 250,000 strong, crossed the Vistula over sixteen pontoon bridges," and deployed on the left bank ready for an advance.
By the evening of Monday, the 19th, the German attack slackened and died away, and "on Tuesday there returned to the city thousands of tired-out, woe-begone Siberian Cossacks and Caucasian cavalrymen—the soldiers who had turned the scale. All Warsaw turned out in the rain to give them cakes and cigarettes, handshakes and cheers."